The New Evangelical Moral Minority - The New Yorker

The New Evangelical Moral Minority - The New Yorker: "Southern Baptists had always tolerated a surprising degree of heterogeneity. In an old PBS news special, Bill Moyers, a former Southern Baptist pastor, fondly remembered the open-minded atmosphere at his childhood congregation, in Texas. “There was no creed, and no coercion,” he said. “We chose our leaders, developed our own programs, without interference from any ecclesiastical organization.” By the nineteen-sixties, S.B.C. seminaries were starting to embrace the kind of liberal theology that was ascendant in mainline Protestant denominations. One graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary reported hearing his professor begin class with an anti-patriarchal prayer: “Our Mother, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Land remembers studying under professors who rejected central tenets of Christian faith, like the existence of Hell, or the reality of Christ’s resurrection. “You’d have preachers who wouldn’t talk about homosexuality,” Land says. “Said that Jesus never mentioned it, so it couldn’t be that important.” America’s first Southern Baptist President—Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976—was a liberal."



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The New Evangelical Moral Minority - The New Yorker

The New Evangelical Moral Minority - The New Yorker: "During this election season, Moore has sometimes appeared out of place in his own denomination—a Trump detractor leading a church largely peopled by Trump supporters. But he seemed comfortable in this uncomfortable position, perhaps because he has learned to accept the limits of his ability to change the world, or even to understand it. Moore thinks that the idea of a moral majority is wrong, and was probably wrong when it was created: he suspects that earnest, orthodox Christians have always been outnumbered. Like any believer, he wants his church to grow, but he doesn’t seem particularly threatened by the thought that it might not. He says that Christians in America must learn to think of themselves as a marginal community, struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile secular culture. In such a context, Muslims might seem less like enemies and more like allies in the fight for religious freedom.

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Facebook is harming our democracy, and Mark Zuckerberg needs to do something about it - Vox

Facebook is harming our democracy, and Mark Zuckerberg needs to do something about it - Vox:

Reporters have come under increasing pressure to write “clickbait” articles that pander to readers’ worst impulses. Too-good-to-check stories gain more traction online than stories that are balanced and thoroughly reported. That has worsened the nation’s political polarization and lowered the quality of democratic discourse.

The fundamental problem here is that Facebook’s leadership is in denial about the kind of organization it has become. “We are a tech company, not a media company,” Zuckerberg has said repeatedly over the last few years. In the mind of the Facebook CEO, Facebook is just a “platform,” a neutral conduit for helping users share information with one another.

But that’s wrong. Facebook makes billions of editorial decisions every day. And often they are bad editorial decisions — steering people to sensational, one-sided, or just plain inaccurate stories. The fact that these decisions are being made by algorithms rather than human editors doesn’t make Facebook any less responsible for the harmful effect on its users and the broader society.

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Democracy’s Majesty and 2016’s Indignity - WSJ

Democracy’s Majesty and 2016’s Indignity - WSJ: "
A closing thought: God is in charge of history. He asks us to work, to try, to pour ourselves out to make things better. But he is an actor in history also. He chastises and rescues, he intervenes in ways seen and unseen. Or chooses not to.



 Twenty sixteen looks to me like a chastisement. He’s trying to get our attention. We have candidates we can’t be proud of. We must choose among the embarrassments. What might we be doing as a nation and a people that would have earned this moment?"



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An open letter to my Republican friends in 2016: Why I cannot support Trump | Joseph Kopser: Thoughts, Ideas and Opinions

An open letter to my Republican friends in 2016: Why I cannot support Trump | Joseph Kopser: Thoughts, Ideas and Opinions: "As someone who grew up a Ronald Reagan Republican, this last 18 months have been hard to watch as the party I admired growing up is in shambles.  After 20 years in the Army, it was hard to stomach his comments about McCain being a loser, his Gold Star family fight, or mostly his outright call to ban Muslims and impose a religious test.   He comments and allegations surrounding women are just proof in my point.  He is unfit to be Command in Chief.  
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A popular FB comment of mine

Source post: "It actually goes back to Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act. Johnson was a senator from Texas and a close ally of the phalanx of southern senators that used their immense seniority to protect their states' oppression of black folks at the national level. In these states, for example, the benefits of the GI Bill were available to whites (like my grandfather, who didn't fight and used it to get a bachelor's degree on his way to becoming a "Rev. Dr.") but systematically denied to blacks, who had fought in war. However, when he became President, he supported civil rights through landmark bills such and the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. Per Randall B. Woods:

"LBJ wrapped white America in a moral straight jacket. How could individuals who fervently, continuously, and overwhelmingly identified themselves with a merciful and just God continue to condone racial discrimination, police brutality, and segregation? Where in the Judeo-Christian ethic was there justification for killing young girls in a church in Alabama, denying an equal education to black children, barring fathers and mothers from competing for jobs that would feed and clothe their families? Was Jim Crow to be America's response to "Godless Communism"?"

When Johnson signed the bill, he noted that he had "lost the South for a generation," and that was true. Southern white gradually shifted from democratic to republican politics as the parties realigned themselves, and the "Southern Strategy" employed by the GOP used racism to win the southern states by spreading imagery like the black "welfare queen," though that image wasn't supported by the literature. Of the two parties, democrats pushed against racism more and won the support of black americans. The Congressional Black Caucus is overwhelmingly democratic.

Is that permanent? No. No party is "owed" the vote of any group, but as long as the GOP shelters and supports racism I don't think there will be much support for it from communities of color. This election feels kind of like the hysteria before the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" where people thought the military would fall apart because of homophobia - likewise, we white people need to get over ourselves and realize that immigration and changing demographics are part of the genius of America (all recent American nobel prize winners were immigrants) and that our country's diversity and efforts for inclusion make us the shining city on a hill that we want to be.

It's that racism, that "we want our country back" feeling, that has in part led to Trump. Analysis of voters have found that Trump support is more about race than it is about economics - Trump supporters make more money than groups that supported other GOP candidates. What unites them, or at least some of them, is this narrative from Arlie Russell Hochschild:

"You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black—beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you're being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart. But who is deciding who you should feel compassion for? Then you see President Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He's on their side. In fact, isn't he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard? As you wait your turn, Obama is using the money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. He and his liberal backers have removed the shame from taking. The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It's not your government anymore; it's theirs."

The GOP won white votes in large majorities (enough to win in 2000 and 2004) in part through an idea of the American Dream that got most americans to support huge tax cuts that weren't for their benefit (which drove some foolish dem political consultants crazy). Racism is a large force in American political life, especially for older white Americans, and Trump tapped into that. His developments were found to be discriminatory by the Justice Department, multiple times, and he advocated for the death penalty for some young black men who were innocent, the "Central Park Five."

People of color are "saving the republic" because older white America is more comfortable with Trump's fascist tendencies than a (somewhat problematic) woman who supports rights for all Americans, and who respects the constitution. Apparently, some portion of the US has taken in so much hatred and nonsense from talk radio that they believed (or wanted to believe) conspiracies like the birth certificate, because that was more convenient than the idea of a qualified black president. The older white woman that cut my hair last night talked about the birth certificate, even.

Trump is grossly unfit for office (my reasons here:http://willslack.blogspot.com/.../why-i-am-nevertrump...) but white people, as a block, would rather put him in power, and the constitution at risk. That's bananas.

Thanks for reading; I hope this was helpful."



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Trump protester: I was beaten for holding a 'Republicans against Trump' sign | US news | The Guardian

Trump protester: I was beaten for holding a 'Republicans against Trump' sign | US news | The Guardian: "Crites said when he was on the ground he heard someone yell “something about a gun” and he kept telling those on top of him that he had merely been holding a sign.

He was unaware, until the Guardian told him, that Trump had been ushered from the stage amid the mayhem.



 For his part, Crites said he felt relieved when police arrived and placed him in handcuffs, but said officers had to fend off Trump supporters who continued to attack him. “As I was taken from the room, people are just looking at me like I’m a demon,” he said."



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The Post-Familial Election - The New York Times

The Post-Familial Election - The New York Times: "Human beings imagine and encounter the future most intensely through our own progeny, our flesh and blood. The Constitution speaks of “our posterity” for a reason: We are a nation of immigrants, but when people think about the undiscovered America of the future, its strongest claim on them is one their own descendants make.

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Tom Nichols: What Trump has already cost America - NY Daily News

Tom Nichols: What Trump has already cost America - NY Daily News:

This fall, I had the chance to talk with ordinary citizens, students, journalists, and others in cities and towns in Central Europe. Almost all of them expressed the same fear: that America was going to elect Donald Trump and abandon them — our NATO allies — to the same fate Russia has inflicted on Ukraine, Georgia, and especially Syria.

They found it incomprehensible that the United States of America could even think of electing a man so obviously enamored of Putin, whom they fear for good reason. They were mystified at the rise of right-wing nationalism, a problem they assumed was localized to Europe but to which America, at least at the level of presidential politics, seemed immune.

Worst of all, they were disappointed and scared. These are people who once lived behind the Iron Curtain. They hoped in us, believed in us, and admired our system of government. It's partly why they bound their fate to ours. Even if Trump loses, they will never look at us the same way, because they know what we're capable of tolerating in a presidential candidate.

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Putin, Assange, and Comey are doing Donald Trump’s work for him - Vox

Putin, Assange, and Comey are doing Donald Trump’s work for him - Vox: "The upshot is that the last phase of the campaign is being shaped by outside forces stretching from Moscow to the FBI’s headquarters in downtown Washington — not by the strength or weakness of the two candidates’ policy ideas.

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WikiLeaks Isn’t Whistleblowing - The New York Times

WikiLeaks Isn’t Whistleblowing - The New York Times:

All campaigns need to have internal discussions. Taking one campaign manager’s email account and releasing it with zero curation in the last month of an election needs to be treated as what it is: political sabotage, not whistle-blowing.

These hacks also function as a form of censorship. Once, censorship worked by blocking crucial pieces of information. In this era of information overload, censorship works by drowning us in too much undifferentiated information, crippling our ability to focus. These dumps, combined with the news media’s obsession with campaign trivia and gossip, have resulted in whistle-drowning, rather than whistle-blowing: In a sea of so many whistles blowing so loud, we cannot hear a single one.

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One final election plea, on the behalf of U.S. ideals - The Washington Post

One final election plea, on the behalf of U.S. ideals - The Washington Post: "I never imagined that Republican leaders — many of whom I know and have respected — would fall in line with such dangerous delusions, on the theory that anything is better than Hillary Clinton. Most options are better than Clinton. But not all. And not this. The GOP has largely accommodated itself to a candidate with no respect for, or knowledge of, the constitutional order. Every constitutional conservative should be revolted. Those who are complicit have adopted a particularly dangerous form of power-loving hypocrisy.

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The Media Never Raised the Bar for Donald Trump | New Republic

The Media Never Raised the Bar for Donald Trump | New Republic: "Everything we’ve seen over the past several months points to the fact that Clinton is at her strongest when she’s disintermediated, while Trump unvarnished is a walking murder-suicide. By leaving this contrast unstated, and saying nothing at all about its implications for the presidency, the media is failing those Americans who have a choice to make by November 8.

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How Macedonia Became A Global Hub For Pro-Trump Misinformation - BuzzFeed News

How Macedonia Became A Global Hub For Pro-Trump Misinformation - BuzzFeed News:

The young Macedonians who run these sites don’t care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: As Facebook regularly reveals in earnings reports, a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of U.S. display advertising — a declining market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles. Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters.

As a result, this strange hub of pro-Trump sites in Macedonia is now playing a significant role in propagating the kind of false and misleading content that was identified in a recent BuzzFeed News analysis of hyperpartisan Facebook pages. These sites open a window into the economic incentives behind producing misinformation specifically for the wealthiest advertising markets and specifically for Facebook, the world’s largest social network, as well as within online advertising networks such as Google AdSense.

“Yes, the info in the blogs is bad, false, and misleading but the rationale is that ‘if it gets the people to click on it and engage, then use it,’” said a university student in Veles who started a US politics site, and who agreed to speak on the condition that BuzzFeed News not use his name.

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Andrew Sullivan: Trump, America, and the Abyss

Andrew Sullivan: Trump, America, and the Abyss: "The most frustrating aspect of the last 12 months has been the notion that we have been in a normal, if truly ugly, election cycle, with one extremely colorful and unpredictable figure leading the Republican Party in an otherwise conventional political struggle over policy. It has been clear for months now, it seems to me, that this is a delusion. A far more accurate account of the past year is that an openly proto-fascist cult leader has emerged to forge a popular movement that has taken over one of the major political parties, eroded central norms of democratic life, undermined American democratic institutions, and now stands on the brink of seizing power in Washington. I made this argument at length in April, when Donald Trump was on the brink of securing the nomination. Everything that has happened since has only made my fears more pressing.

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World Series: Here’s How the Chicago Cubs Won Game 7 - The New York Times

World Series: Here’s How the Chicago Cubs Won Game 7 - The New York Times:

But 2016 was the 108th year after their last title, and a baseball is sewn together with 108 stitches. This had to be the year.

It was.

On Wednesday night the Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-7, in a Game 7 for the ages. With that victory — yes, the following words are really true — the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

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The Dangers of Donald Trump - The New York Times

The Dangers of Donald Trump - The New York Times: "But I think that reluctant Trump supporters are overestimating the systemic durability of the American-led order, and underestimating the extent to which a basic level of presidential competence and self-control is itself a matter of life and death — for Americans, and for human beings the world over.

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I come from the land of Trump, and I know why he’s winning in rural communities; it’s not why you… – Medium

I come from the land of Trump, and I know why he’s winning in rural communities; it’s not why you… – Medium: "I know why you’re voting for Trump, friends. We’re all afraid, I assure you. My fears are amplified by the threat of Trump winning, but at the end of the day, I don’t want to be against you.I know we are more similar than we are different. I know we can find common ground. I know we can overcome our fear, and start sorting out how we work to rebuild our place, together."



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Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes - The New York Times

Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes - The New York Times: "It is unclear whether the I.R.S. ever challenged Mr. Trump’s use of this specific tax maneuver. According to a financial disclosure statement prepared by Mr. Trump’s accountants, he was under audit by the tax authorities as of 1993, only a year after he avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income because of this legally suspect tactic. But the results of that audit are unknown, and the agency declined to comment on Monday.

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U-2 Incident . Eisenhower . WGBH American Experience | PBS

U-2 Incident . Eisenhower . WGBH American Experience | PBS:

These activities have their own rules and methods of concealment, which seek to mislead and obscure - just as in the Soviet allegations there are many discrepancies. For example, there is some reason to believe that the plane in question was not shot down at high altitude. The normal agencies of our Government are unaware of these specific activities or of the special efforts to conceal them.

Third point: How should we view all of this activity?

It is a distasteful but vital necessity.

We prefer and work for a different kind of world -- and a different way of obtaining the information essential to confidence and effective deterrence. Open societies, in the day of present weapons, are the only answer.

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